Church Website Effectiveness

Put yourself in the shoes of someone that just moved to your city. They do not know anyone and they do not know their way around the city. They miss their friends at their home church or they have a crisis which puts church in the forefront of their mind. They then decide to look for a church. They turn on their computer and type in www.google.com. Then they type in the only 2 words that makes sense to search on.

1. The city they live in
2. The word “church”

The question is will your church’s website show up on the first page of results? Since I’m greeting every Sunday, I get the chance to find out how people found our church. A majority of them say they found us by a Google search on the Internet. Our church, Olathe Life Fellowship, shows up in the number 1 spot when you type in “Olathe Church” into Google. Try this exercise on your website. If you don’t show up, ask your webmaster to work on your page ranking.

Do You Have a Cool Church Website?

About a year and a half ago, our church changed the logo and the website. After some advice from our logo designer (Andrew Fortner) and our website designer (Kyle Kutter), we stepped away from a rural, Kansas looking website and logo to an urban, clean and hip look. I'm sure artistic people could describe the new look better than I could so you can click here to see the website. Our attendance grew by 30% after that. Even though there could be other factors that contributed to our church growing, this change to our website seems to have significantly helped our church to grow. After reading the book “Blink” by Malcom Gladwell, I now understand a little bit better why our new look helped our church to grow. Malcom Gladwell explained the concept through this example:

A well-known consulting group, Cheskin, was posed with the problem of why consumers preferred E&J Brandy over Christian Brothers Brandy. Here’s what they found out:

• During a blind taste test: The two brandies came out about the same. Therefore, the product is not the problem.
• During a taste test when people were told the brand name for each glass of brandy: Christian Brothers came out on top. Therefore, the branding is not the problem.
• During a taste test with the actual brandy bottles in the background: E&J came out on top. Therefore, the packing is the problem.
• Just to make sure the problem was the packaging, they served Christian Brothers Brandy out of an E&J Brandy bottle and vice versa. Christian Brothers Brandy in an E&J bottle won by a large margin.

Your church logo and church website are your church’s “packaging.” For many potential visitors to your church, your website is the first impression they will have. Will people want to visit your church based on your packaging?

Church Mission Statement Problems

This past weekend I was visiting a church and the pastor felt their mission statement had a deficiency. Can you spot the deficiency? Here was their mission statement: “Living for Christ and serving the community through love.”

It is really easy to get confused on what to put in your church’s mission statement. Fortunately, Jesus gave the church their mission statement. In Matthew 29:19 (NIV) Jesus states: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” There should only be 2 things in a church mission statement:

1. Evangelism
2. Discipleship

Anything less is a parachurch ministry mission statement and not a church mission statement. Here are some examples of good mission statements:

Turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. – Willowcreek Church
Helping People Take Their Next Step Toward Christ…Together – Granger Community Church
Reaching Seekers. Building Believers. – Forest Hill Community Church
To Lead People to a Healthy Relationship with Jesus Christ. – Olathe Life Fellowship

A mission statement should be:

- Timeless – You shouldn’t ever have to change it
- Short – It should fit on a T-shirt
- Action oriented
- Memorable
- Easy to understand
- Publicly repeated until everyone is sick of hearing it
- Reflect the culture of the church

Some additional great resources on this topic are Visioneering by Andy Stanley and Advanced Strategic Planning by Aubrey Malpurs.